


One Captain and One Admiral

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-19
Updated: 2007-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 07:18:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1638527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nancy will always stand strong for her Admiral.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Captain and One Admiral

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Dessie for the idea and the prompt! And thank you to Lia for the beta.
> 
> Written for Dessie

 

 

Nancy was learning to knit a sock. She had already learned how to darn one - there was no sense becoming a sailor on the lake if your socks couldn't keep your feet warm - but she wanted to know how to make one herself. She had resisted Mother as long as possible, thinking that knitting socks was one of those rather wet things that Peggy allowed herself to be fascinated by. Nancy, who still refused to be called Ruth, even after she had gone away to school, had lasted all her life so far without learning how to make a sock. She knew just about every knot, and she knew all there was to know about nautical discoveries, and if they had only let her, she would have joined up with John.

But women weren't allowed to join the Royal Navy, so Nancy had joined the Home Guard - but it wasn't anything near satisfying enough, pulling up signposts and preparing sandbags against invasion. She had always been a part of things, right in the thick of it all, leading the troops into battle. Of course, she knew well enough that war against the Walkers did not prepare her at all - but she had to do something. She couldn't bear the thought of all that going on, without her doing anything to help. She liked being right in it, leading the charge, getting things sorted. And John - he went off so brave. She'd cried when they'd said good-bye - cried, and been ashamed. But he'd kissed her cheek and told her he would come back. She might as well make sure that there was something for him to come back to.

Peggy and Mother kept trying to help, but they really didn't know what she wanted. She wanted this whole bloody war over and done with, so that John would come home - all the boys would come home. The RAF boys would come into town when they were on leave, and they'd flood the hall when there were dances on Saturday nights, and Nancy would go, and if Susan and Tilly had come to visit, as they often did, they'd join Nancy and Peggy. The four of them, their hair curled and their dresses pressed, and Roger at home, wishing he could be at sea just at much as Nancy.

And those RAF boys would smile at her, and ask her to dance, and she couldn't say no, because they were out there fighting, just as John was! But they weren't tall like him, and their smiles weren't the same, and if she tried to talk to them about the things she like, they would just smile again, and tell her how bright her eyes were, or wouldn't she like to take a walk? The moon was so lovely that night.

The moon hadn't been lovely since the last summer at the lake, three weeks before John left, and the two of them had taken the boats out one last time.

"Just the two Captains, eh?" John had said as they'd slipped the moorings, sliding softly into the water.

"One Captain and one Admiral," Nancy had replied, the small bite of his rank long having left her. They hadn't spoken much more, only steering with their torches and the moonlight out to Wild Cat Island, the secret harbour as easy as port as putting on ones' socks by this point.

The light on the lake was bright and clear, and Nancy couldn't help thinking of that first battle - Peggy and herself sneaking out of their beds, the boat hidden in the rushes, and John and Susan and Roger, just passing them by. Easy as anything to hide from them, trick them.

"Promise, John - if you have to. You'll hide, you'll keep safe." Nancy had wanted to say it to him, get a promise she knew he would keep - but she couldn't make him promise that, not if he was going off to fight in the War.

She hadn't said anything, really, not anything of any merit. She had wanted to so badly, to let him know how she felt, to let him know how worried she was, how jealous she was, how much she would miss him and how much she loved him. How she would wait for him, and how she never wanted to be someone who waited for anything - how she never had, if she could help it.

But how could she, how could she say those things and then hope he would stay strong and clear - he had to be ruthless, in order to come back to her, and although she was Nancy now, she had been Ruth once. They had spent all their time together, as much as was allowed, that whole summer. They'd written the entire winter before, long letters that said everything and nothing. She read them over after he had gone, read the old letters as often as she read the new, and they still said everything and nothing.

The food was bad. He had said that once, and so she tried to make sure she stopped complaining, when Peggy would, about the lack of sugar. Pemmican, that's what it was. It was camping in Swallowdale and eating pemmican out of tins.

Jolly it along and find ways to work around it all, as a plan, seemed to work during the day, and when she was with other people. But at night, or if she would go for a moonlit walk with one of the RAF boys, she would see John, so tall and strong, in the bow of his boat, or telling Tilly about the finer points of this strategic move, or laughing at Captain Flint's stories.

He went off to fight, and she stayed behind. She had gotten herself into the Home Guard, no matter what Great Aunt Maria would say, and she would do her part. That was what was expected of her, of all of England - that they would do their parts.

And she learned to knit him socks.

 


End file.
